Orlando Selenas, crane mechanic, prepares to plug in a 6,000 volt extension cord that will power the engine that is used to load and unload containers on the Mahimahi at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach on Friday. The cord and the system it runs on serve as an alternative power source to high-pollution engines that are used to load and unload containers.

The breaker control serves as the switch that will send power through a 6,000 volt extension cord that helps power the engine used to load and unload containers onto the Mahimahi at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach on Friday. The cord and the system it runs on serve as an alternative power source to high-pollution engines that are used to load and unload containers.

Orlando Selenas, crane mechanic, plugs in a 6,000 volt extension cord that will power the engine that is used to load and unload containers on the Mahimahi at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach on Friday. The cord and the system it runs on serve as an alternative power source to high-pollution engines that are used to load and unload containers.

The outlet box and a 6,000 volt extension cord that helps power the engine used to load and unload containers onto the Mahimahi at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach on Friday. The cord and the system it runs on serve as an alternative power source to high-pollution engines that are used to load and unload containers.

The outlet box for the 6,000 volt extension cord that helps power the engine used to load and unload containers onto the Mahimahi at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach on Friday. The cord and the system it runs on serve as an alternative power source to high-pollution engines that are used to load and unload containers.

Orlando Selenas, crane mechanic, waits to plug in a 6,000 volt extension cord that will power the engine that is used to load and unload containers on the Mahimahi at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach on Friday. The cord and the system it runs on serve as an alternative power source to high-pollution engines that are used to load and unload containers.

Orlando Selenas, crane mechanic, secures a 6,000 volt extension cord before he and his team use a lift to move it into place to power the engine that is used to load and unload containers on the Mahimahi at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach on Friday. The cord and the system it runs on serve as an alternative power source to high-pollution engines that are used to load and unload containers.

Orlando Selenas, crane mechanic uses a voltage detector to test the 6,000 volt extension cord before he and the two other members of his crew handle the cord at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach on Friday. The cord and the system it runs on serve as an alternative power source to high-pollution engines that are used to load and unload containers.

Left to right - Pete Wright, crane foreman, Orlando Selenas, crane mechanic, and Ron Higgs, mechanic, work to secure a 6,000 volt extension cord before using a lift to move it into place to power the engine that is used to load and unload containers on the Mahimahi at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach on Friday. While there are several places to plug in, ships drop their cords in different areas, forcing the crew to make adjustments when needed.

Orlando Selenas, left, crane mechanic, reaches toward Pete Wright, crane foreman, for a section of a 6,000 volt extension cord that will power the engine that is used to load and unload containers on the Mahimahi at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach on Friday. The cord and the system it runs on serve as an alternative power source to high-pollution engines that are used to load and unload containers.

Orlando Selenas, crane mechanic, secures a 6,000 volt extension cord before he and his team use a lift to move it into place to power the engine that is used to load and unload containers on the Mahimahi at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach on Friday. While there are several places to plug in, ships drop their cords in different areas, forcing the crew to make adjustments when needed.

Orlando Selenas, crane mechanic, slides the cord onto rollers as Ron Higgs, mechanic, uses a lift to move a 6,000 volt extension cord into place to power the engine that is used to load and unload containers on the Mahimahi at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach on Friday. While there are several places to plug in, ships drop their cords in different areas, forcing the crew to make adjustments when needed.

Workers slowly lower a 6,000 volt extension cord off the side of the Mahimahi at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach on Friday. The cord and the system it runs on serve as an alternative power source to high-pollution engines that are used to load and unload containers.

Containers are unloaded from the Mahimahi and placed on trailers at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach on Friday. The cord and the system it runs on serve as an alternative power source to high-pollution engines that are used to load and unload containers.

Anthony Brooks, 4, of Compton rides his scooter across the street from Hudson Park located next to Terminal Island Freeway in Long Beach on Wednesday. The freeway and the railroad next to it are used to haul containers from the Port of Long Beach.

Power bills for shipping lines berthed at the Port of Long Beach are about to rise, in the millions.

The port is No. 3 on Southern California Edison’s list of top consumers of electricity, with only the energy-hungry ExxonMobil oil refinery in Torrance and Los Angeles County’s network of courthouses and office buildings consuming more – though perhaps not for much longer.

Power consumption in the port is set to grow as much as six times its current load come Jan. 1, as it powers up through 2014 to meet strict new guidelines to cut down on air pollution, according to Edison spokesman Marvin Jackmon. This is because roughly half of all ships that call at the Port of Long Beach will be required to plug-in to the electrical grid at berth.

This equates to roughly 250 vessels, possibly as many as 10,000 visits a year to all of California’s ports, though the majority are to the ports in Long Beach and Los Angeles, according to estimates provided by a regulator.

Half of an ocean carrier’s fleet of container, refrigerated cargo ships and cruise ships that dock at California ports must get plugged into power at berth. In industry parlance, shore power is referred to as cold-ironing. The rules apply not only to Long Beach’s port, but also ports in Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco and Hueneme.

Over the next six years, greater levels of compliance kick in, eventually topping out in 2020 with a requirement that 80 percent of vessels plug in for container fleets that make more than 25 or more calls and cruise fleets that make five or more calls at a California port, said Grant Chin, an air pollution specialist with the California Air Resources Board, or CARB. The environmental rules were adopted in 2008.

The purpose of plugging ships into sockets on the dock is to cut down on dirty air that’s emitted from diesel-fueled engines on vessels filled with more than half of the nation’s imported goods. The power runs everything on a ship, ranging from coolers and drainage systems to cranes and lights – enough to run a tiny town.

Plugging in essentially involves unrolling a huge spool on a ship that holds a 6-inch-wide power cord. Workers on the dock navigate the cord into a socket in a protective box. Someone else flips the switch on at a substation, sending enough power through a 6,600-kilovolt line to light 1,500 homes.

Edison has spent at least $70 million on four substations that will help it deliver power to the ships, said Jackmon. It already sends about 33 megawatts of power to the Port of Long Beach and expects to boost that load to as much as 150 to 200 megawatts by the end of 2014.

“That’s a big jump,” Jackmon said.

One megawatt of power, for instance, is enough electricity to power 750 homes at any given moment. About 200 megawatts is enough to light 150,000 homes.

The extra power cost, however, is balanced by the pollution reductions that will be achieved, clean air advocates say.

Ships generate more than 60 percent of the emissions from port-related operations. Major scientific studies have shown that the added pollution causes potential health risks — like asthma, heart problems and cancer — to children and elderly who live in hot zones within a few miles of the L.A. and Long Beach ports complex.

Still, Chin isn’t certain about the extent of compliance by the shippers until Jan. 1 rolls around. Some of the 50 fleets affected by the plug-in rules began complying before 2008, he said.

“No one has said they can’t comply,” he said. “We expect a few hiccups.”

Hundreds of millions of dollars has been spent getting ready for the deadline.

“You’d have to have your head buried in the sand to not be ready for this,” said Lisa Swanson, director of environmental affairs with Matson, a shipping line that runs between Hawaii and Long Beach.

She said she doesn’t see the policy catching on at ports across the world, but sees the value in it.

The Port of Long Beach estimates it will have spent $115.8 million on plug-in facilities and power lines on more than a dozen berths throughout the port by the Jan. 1 deadline, said Noel Hacegaba, acting deputy executive director of the Port of Long Beach.

One of the big challenges for Edison will be to keep costs down.

“It’s the cost of doing business in California,” said Chin, who said rate structures could eventually be changed so that shippers get a favorable discount on power bills. But Edison’s Jackmon said bills could fall 5 percent to 15 percent if the new rates are adopted by the state’s power regulator, the California Public Utilities Commission.

Until then, wholesale power prices could rise because Edison permanently closed its crippled San Onofre nuclear plant this summer due to uncertainty over the cost and timing of restarting one of its reactors. The utility spent $500 million on repairs and power replacement costs since the plant was idled in early 2012 after a small radiation leak led to the discovery of unusual damage to hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water.

Jackmon said that his utility has sufficient electricity flowing to the ports. Only a major disruption to the electrical grid – such as an earthquake, lightning strike or some weather-related force – could cause a blackout and disrupt operations.

***

Scientific studies fuel interest in cleaner ports

There have been several studies since the late 1990s that have tried to document lung disorders, heart problems and cancer risks in communities surrounding the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.

Smoke-belching ships at berth and trucks rumbling up and down the Terminal Island Freeway are what raised red flags on medical concerns, and complaints from community activists who were hearing about asthma problems from parents with kids at Edison Elementary, Hudson K-8 and Cesar Chavez Elementary schools, among other campuses near the ports complex.

Edward Avol, a professor of preventive medicine with USC, has conducted several studies on health risks caused by particulate diesel pollution and noxious gases on kids and the elderly.

“Some of the gases associated with diesel increase the risk of asthma if you live within a few 100 meters, or a quarter-mile” from a major source of pollution, Avol said. “It can cause asthma, lower lung function and lead to other disabilities,” he said. “Think of it like a constant decay. The closer you get, the worse it is,” he said.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District, the air quality agency in Southern California, also had tongues wagging back in 2008 when it issued its air quality report and the impacts on health. It’s called the “Multiple Air Toxics Exposure Study,” or MATES.

The agency has done a few MATES studies since the late 1990s, with its third one in 2006 showing that cancer risk from air pollution in Southern California had dropped 15 percent since clean-up efforts began in earnest over the decade before.

Overall, its studies found that diesel exhaust – from sources like the ships that call in the ports – were major risk contributors, accounting for about 84 percent of the total cancer risk associated with the air pollutants that were investigated.

“The cancer risk more than doubled … for those who live around the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, due to the significant diesel use at the ports,” the MATES study said in 2006.

Gary Hytrek, a sociology professor at Cal State Long Beach, also made a significant contribution when he and others knocked on the doors of more than 600 people living in West Long Beach to survey the connection between their health and air pollutants.

His 2011 study asked the survey respondents about their medical conditions. He looked at the length of time they lived in the neighborhood, asked questions about their general health, and whether they were concerned about pollution.

“Most noteworthy and troublesome is the number of households with asthmas – especially childhood asthma—and heart-related problems,” Hytrek wrote.

***

Air pollution spurs shore power change

It’s long been known that Southern California has some of the worst air quality in the country.

The Los Angeles region is home to the largest port complex in the nation, which relies on diesel-powered ships, trains and trucks to sustain its operations. Smog and diesel particulate matter pollution are linked to cancer, asthma, premature death and cardio-respiratory diseases, according to scientific studies conducted by everyone from the USC to the South Coast Air Quality Management District. The elderly and children are the most vulnerable to these pollutants.

Morgan Wyenn, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Santa Monica, said shore power came about as the result of a 2001 lawsuit over violation of environmental laws by the Port of Los Angeles when it attempted to expand a container terminal for China Shipping.

The result of that lawsuit was the creation of a $50 million air quality and aesthetic mitigation fund and the first green container terminal in the world that utilizes shoreside power for ships and alternative fuel container-handling equipment. The asthma and cancer risks from diesel pollution are 60 percent higher for communities close to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach than elsewhere in the region, and have steadily increased over the years, while pollution in other areas has dropped, according to Wyenn.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.